Technology of Sovereignty

Everything changes, nothing can remain the same for long if it is to succeed for any extended period. Today, I was in Philadelphia's museum dedicated to the Constitution of the United States. The Queen of England was a few hundred miles away, visiting Jamestown, the first English colony in North America. Seems like the day might expose something about how sovereignty has been evolving and succeeding near the North Atlantic ocean in the past few hundred years.

Well, in Philly, I was reminded of the roots of American independence - largely in the goal of the inhabitants of the colonies to keep more of the monetary fruits of their labors onshore, as opposed to sending them to the English Crown. I was reminded of the honorable goal of establishing a new continental government whose powers minimally trampled on the fundamental human rights of the governed, instead of taxing them without regard to taxpayer views. The technology of sovereignty was seen as advancing in the name of that goal, through a careful separation of sovereign powers so as to minimize the concentration and potential abuse of such power by one mind or one political party.

Those developments of course succeeded only in spite of powerful and fiery opposition from England. But the Queen today reaffirmed the close kinship and mutual respect that subsists between England and the United States. The US Vice President wholeheartedly agreed. Against the trappings of apparently deep policy and military cooperation between the two sovereigns today, the platitudes do not seem worth much ink.

But are we missing something, both in the development of sovereignty as well as in how that development is perceived and reported? Could it be that England's 18th century (and current?) over-stretched view of the extent of its sovereignty has become the current bad habit of the US Government? Not that the US is "taxing without representation" in the same way. But could the US be assuming, even when it might be incorrect, that its means, power, and influence are always beneficial for foreign lands?

Those who were present with the Queen today refrained from using the word "celebration" in order to respect the sorrow of the lost lives of the native Americans whose fate was controlled by the commercial and political machinations of the (largely) English settlers. Today's event was therefore instead termed a "commemoration", and I do not think the Vice President's office protested this nomenclature. But I remain discouraged. I doubt the Vice President (or others in his administration) truly appreciates that the US is now widely seen as the globe's current abuser of sovereign power. That revolutionary forces are arrayed against the US, and its Boston Tea Party mythology. And that the pride amongst those so arrayed runs as deep as it did among the colonials who defeated the English in North America after declaring independence.

I'd like to think that these tensions will be ancient history several hundred years hence, when there could be a Jamestown-style back-patting session amongst former enemies. But there may have to be another US Constitution-style upheaval in the management and constraint of sovereign power if the road to that session is to be paved.